Responding to culturally based spiritual experiences in clinical practice from East Asian perspectives

Abstract

Spirituality is one of the most important aspects of diversity; however, it is often neglected in clinical practice and even in multicultural training. In order for clinicians and trainers to deepen their understandings of how to incorporate culturally based spiritual experiences effectively into their practices, this study explored how East Asian clinicians respond to spiritual beliefs expressed and spiritual practices utilised by their East Asian clients. Three focus groups were formed consisting of nine clinicians from Chinese, Korean, and Japanese communities in the Northwest region of the United States. Each group was interviewed based on the semi-structured question guideline and the data were analysed to identify core themes of culturally based spiritual experiences and delineate effective ways to understand and respond to them. This article included various case examples as well as clinical recommendations suggested by research participants.

Responding to Southeast Asian spirituality in clinical practice.

“…The needs and effects of these spiritual practices are documented in other studies (Hinton et al, 2005;Nagai, 2013;Nguyen, 2014), but this study finds an importance of locating qualified spiritual masters in order to ensure the expected results and using spiritual practices appropriately due to the both positive and negative sides of spirituality. For example one participant advised that "spiritual healers need to reach the certain level," because spiritual practices are "not helpful when spiritual healers do not follow rules of conduct, lie or exploit the clients" (C-2).…”